


the love doctor's out on medical leave

by MorteLise



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M, Mishaps, Profanity, Valentine's Day, courtesy of Qrow, featuring a cameo by Winter Schnee as Officer Done With This, the fashionably late Valentine's Day disaster fic nobody asked for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 22:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13690776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorteLise/pseuds/MorteLise
Summary: Qrow sets out to give Ozpin a memorable first Valentine's Day. Technically, he succeeds.“Yes, officer,” Ozpin said wearily, staring at his handcuffed boyfriend, “I do know this man.”





	the love doctor's out on medical leave

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason not until the final hours of Valentine's Day did I get the violent urge to write a Valentine's Day fic.

“Yes, officer,” Ozpin said wearily, staring at his handcuffed boyfriend, “I do know this man.”

Officer Schnee looked unconvinced. “Are you sure?” she asked, giving him a concerned, conspiratorial look as her eyes darted briefly back towards Qrow, as though Qrow Branwen could ever possibly be mistaken for someone else.

Or maybe she was just giving Ozpin one last opportunity to deny knowing him.

Qrow did admittedly look more bandit than boyfriend at the moment, incongruously dressed in an all-black sweatshirt and matching sweatpants, a large trash bag full of multiple mystery items puddled at his feet, and smelling strongly of wine for reasons Ozpin hoped were something other than the obvious. Qrow caught his eye and winked.

This was really not what Ozpin had expected to come home to.

“Your neighbors reported him climbing in through the window,” Officer Schnee continued. She gave him a vaguely accusatory frown. “They didn’t recognize him.”

Ozpin sighed. “He’s been out of town,” he said. “Must’ve misplaced his keys.”

“Told ya,” Qrow said to the officer with a cheeky grin, and thank goodness Ozpin had gotten home before she could take him down to the station; chances were he’d never see Qrow again if he made it that far.

Ozpin put on his most reassuring, trust-me-I’m-a-teacher smile. “I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you on Valentine’s Day, Officer Schnee. But there’s no problem here.”

She shot them both another disgruntled, unimpressed look, then beckoned Qrow over to her and began unlocking his handcuffs. “Sorry for the mistake,” she muttered.

Qrow smirked. “Not my first time in cuffs, Ice Queen.”

“No, I’m sure it’s not,” she replied flatly, and gave a curt nod to Ozpin. “Have a good night, sir,” she said, and left.

There were not enough questions in the world, so mostly Ozpin just stared at Qrow in pained, incredulous askance until an answer emerged.

Qrow shrugged, dragging his admittedly ominous-looking bag to the living area, then flopped down on Ozpin’s couch. “I wanted to surprise you,” he said, which barely gave any context at all.

“Consider me surprised,” Ozpin said dryly, setting his briefcase down by the kitchen counter before going to join him. “Shouldn’t you be in Paris?”

Qrow snorted. “Yeah, spending the night alone in the city of romance on Valentine’s Day, nothing depressing about that.” He nudged at the bag but didn’t move to open it. “Boss postponed the meeting for a couple of days. Said he didn’t want to be the Valentine’s Day equivalent of Scrooge McDuck.”

“Ebenezer Scrooge,” Ozpin corrected automatically, and the playful smirk on Qrow’s face told him the mistake had been deliberate. A blush climbed up his face. He cleared his throat. “In any case, I thought we agreed we weren’t doing Valentine’s Day. So what lead to...” words failed him and he gestured at Qrow vaguely, “this?”

It had been a mutual decision not to do Valentine’s Day. The chances that Qrow would be home for it had been abysmally low even before he’d been asked to fly out to Europe. And neither of them was much into holidays, anyway.

And this—thing they had, it was still uncharted territory. Qrow had only ever done casual relationships and Ozpin had spiraled so deeply into academia that he’d barely done any at all. Better not to put on the pressure while they were still figuring things out.

And yet, as deeply as Ozpin’s spirits had plunged at the sight of a police car outside his apartment complex, he had been absurdly, irrationally happy at the sight of Qrow. Even in handcuffs.

Qrow shrugged self-consciously. “Yeah, well—it’s kind of a long story,” he said. He nudged at the bag again.

Ozpin chuckled. “I’m a literary professor, Qrow. Long stories are literally my whole life.”

Qrow flashed him a warm, fond smile at that—the one that made his eyes brighten and shed at least three years of accumulated stress off his handsome face. If Ozpin had managed to stymie his earlier blush, he certainly wasn’t managing it now. “Yeah, alright. Strap yourself in then, Teach, and enjoy the ride.”

Qrow took a breath and frowned, no doubt wondering where to start. Ozpin leaned forward and propped up his chin with a hand, the picture of interest.

Even if this was all that came of their abruptly disastrous evening, it was already much more than he’d thought he’d be getting out of it.

“So I wasn’t gonna do anything,” Qrow began, in a tone of voice that suggested that wasn’t entirely true, but that his original idea hadn’t involved spontaneously hopping a five-hour flight back home and nearly getting arrested. “But then I made the mistake of calling Tai.”

“Your brother-in-law, right?” Ozpin asked, dredging up context for the name from conversations past.

Qrow grimaced. “Raven was too allergic to commitment for there to be anything lawful about it,” he said. “But yeah, my niece’s dad.”

Bringing up the sister. There was one strike for Ozpin. He was already doing such a wonderful job of ensuring Qrow didn’t regret this any more than he already did.

Qrow picked the story back up quickly enough, at least. “So Tai read me the riot act for missing our first Valentine’s Day. Talked my ear off, really ran up my roaming charges, guy’s lucky he helped spawn my two favorite nieces or he’d be six feet under by now. Must’ve been jetlagged, because at some point what he was saying started making sense.” He shrugged. “Had just started caving when the boss mentioned the meeting got postponed, and hoo boy, did Taiyang jump on that, rocketing right on to gushing about serendipity and the grand romantic gesture shit. Crazy thing was, mathing it out made it seem like it could actually work.”

Qrow plucked the sleeve of his sweatshirt self-consciously. “Y’know, for the first few hours I was stupid enough to think it was gonna be alright. I mean, city of romance, I barely even needed to think about gift options. Got a bottle of wine, chocolate, packed a couple changes of clothes for when I got in—even managed to book a flight that would give me a time window coming and going.”

He raised a knowing eyebrow. “Figured you’d be working late,” he said, and that was a very safe assumption, Ozpin verged on workaholic on a good day, and despite their mutual agreement to this arrangement, the constant reminder of happy couples had not made this a good day at all. Qrow sighed, eyes distant. “I’d get home, freshen up, do a quick change, and still have time to set everything up at your place before you got back. Perfect surprise, right?”

Ozpin tried to tamp down on his surge of affection, but only so he could keep giving Qrow his full attention. That was—well, impulsive, to be sure, and clearly something had gone wrong down the line, but that Qrow had put that much thought into it—into _him_ — in the first place meant more than he could say.

“I’m guessing it didn’t pan out that way?” he prompted, playing into the narrative, and Qrow rolled his eyes.

“Family curse at work,” said Qrow. “Once I get comfortable with something, it all goes wrong.”

Ozpin opened his mouth to give a reflexive objection, all too used to Qrow’s stalwart belief that the Branwen family had accumulated so much negative karma over the generations that it had made them actually jinxed. Qrow had uncommonly long streaks of bad luck, true, but blaming it all on superstition—

Qrow held up a hand before he could get a word out. “Just listen to this,” he said, and it seemed they’d reached the beginning of whatever chain of events had lead to what Ozpin’d walked in on. “I get off the plane, and it turns out the bottle burst in my luggage.”

Ah. That _was_ unfortunate. But it did explain the lingering scent of wine.

“It has a very aromatic bouquet,” Ozpin offered, and Qrow grimaced, sniffing at his wrist.

“Damn, I thought I got it all off. Only really had time to change clothes at that point, though. No wonder Robocop was giving me the stink eye.”

“I sincerely doubt that was the only reason,” Ozpin said wryly, and Qrow placed a mock-offended hand on his chest.

“Wow, Oz, really? After everything I’ve done for you?”

Ozpin grinned, waving an expectant hand. “Yes, do finish telling me what you’ve done for me.”

Qrow took another deep breath. “Right. So that was the end of my luggage. All of it. The wine, the chocolate, the clothes, and now I looked like a serial killer after opening the bag to find out what the fuck went wrong. Fine, not a great start, and I bet the cab driver thought I was a psycho, but I figured I’d go home, clean up, and rush out to buy something local with the time I had left.”

He scowled in remembrance of whatever had happened next. “So Tai forgot to tell me he took my car,” he said through gritted teeth. “Guess Yang had a hot date for the night so she borrowed his and he took mine. And I was shorter on time than I thought after the wine explosion. Told the driver to wait up, scrubbed off what I could, and grabbed the first clean clothes I could find,” he glanced back down at his sweatshirt and shrugged apologetically, “then headed out to scrape together a new set up. Had to do a lot of settling the second time around.” He nudged at the trashbag again. “Bought that ‘cause I was afraid of leaving anything in the car. Stuffed everything inside and then told the driver to head to your place.”

They were nearly caught up, then.

Ozpin raised an eyebrow. “You do have a key to my apartment, Qrow,” he said, not aiming for condescending but fairly certain he hit it anyway.

Qrow huffed an exasperated sigh. “Yeah, I do, and do you know how terrifying it is for me to be responsible for that?” he asked. “I keep thinking I’m gonna lose it. Why’re you giving me a key before we’re even a year into it?”

Ozpin frowned. It was hard to tell what was abnormal due to his lack of experience in relationships and what was Qrow’s own insecurities shining through, sometimes. “I wanted you to have it. You could’ve said something if you felt it was too soon, it’s not as though I have much precedence for this.”

Qrow winced and raked a hand through his hair self-consciously. “Yeah. Right. I appreciate the ‘you giving it to me’ part, it’s the ‘me having it’ that I worry about.”

“Well, you did lose it,” Ozpin pointed out, and this he absolutely intended to sound accusatory.

Qrow grinned triumphantly. “Ha, that’s where you’re wrong,” he said, chest puffed with pride. “I was worried about losing it, what with going abroad all the time, had nightmares about having to call you up and say your key was cruising around Thailand or something, so I put it on the one key ring I’ve always got on me at home but never bring with me travelling.”

He jabbed a passionate finger at him, eyes gleaming. “My goddamn car keys. I didn’t lose your key, Tai stole it.”

Ozpin smiled in spite of himself. “Well, then, make sure you give him a scolding from me when you get them back.”

“Oh, I’ll give him a lot more than that,” Qrow muttered darkly. He ruminated briefly on his plans for vengeance before quickly wrapping up his tale of woe. “Anyway, paid the driver, realized I didn’t have the keys, saw your window was open, and you can probably take it from there.”

Ozpin nodded, still absorbing the story. “I see,” he said, hoping his smile wasn’t too wide given the unfortunate circumstances. “And would you say it was worth it?”

Qrow stared at him, looking so taken aback that Ozpin feared that he’d taken it too far, making light of all the effort he’d made.

Qrow scoffed. “Well _yeah_ ,” he said, as though the answer was obvious. He laced their fingers together. “Still here with you for the night, aren’t I?”

And Ozpin really had no words for that.

After a while he gave up trying to find any, and leaned forward to kiss Qrow instead. Qrow kissed him back, warm, bracing, and eager—and most importantly here, despite everything, just because he had thought Ozpin worth it.

Ozpin was granted exactly twenty seconds of quiet bliss before Qrow started, jolting away to rummage around in the plastic bag. “I did bring some romantic atmosphere bullshit with me,” he said, head practically stuffed in the bag. “S’from the convenience store around the corner instead of, y’know, Paris, but we got the wine, the chocolate—”

Ozpin wrapped his arms around him and gently guided him away from the bag, curling up next to him. “I appreciate it,” he said, nuzzling at Qrow’s neck. “But for now, having you is more than enough.”

A sigh ruffled Ozpin’s hair. “S’great being here with you, too,” Qrow murmured, body relaxing as whatever adrenaline high had gotten him through the last few hours finally began to wear off.

Ozpin was content to let him sleep. Honestly, it was a miracle he’d stayed conscious this long between the stress and ricochetting between time zones.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Ozpin said, and pressed another kiss to his cheek.

Barely conscious or not, Qrow smiled. “You, too, Oz.”

 


End file.
